Dolgoprudny

The name of the city comes from the name of the railway platform Dolgoprudnaya (built in 1900), which, in turn, comes from the Dolgo ("long") stake of the old Pushkin's estate Vinogradovo, located near the station. It was on the initiative of noblemen Pushkins (direct ancestors of the poet) in the XVII century here was dug Long pond, which later changed many owners. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries the neighborhood of Dolgiy Ponds became a dacha center. Near one of the dacha neighborhoods and there was a stop Dolgoprudnaya, around which the settlement gradually began to grow. Soon the so-called "New Dachas" appeared, a little closer to Moscow, near which the Novodachnaya stop appeared.

The city of Dolgoprudny owes its birth to the airship manufacturing enterprise, the construction of which was started in 1931 near the Dolgoprudnaya railway platform. Soon the enterprise was named "Dirigiblestroy" (now Dolgoprudny Research and Production Enterprise, develops and manufactures air defense weapons). Within a few years, production shops and auxiliary facilities, airship boathouses, a gas plant producing hydrogen, residential and communal buildings, several stores and stalls were built here.

Up to 1935, the settlement at the enterprise did not have not only its own name, but also the official status of a settlement. In December 1934, after Kirov's assassination, the workers proposed to give their "town" the name of the deceased figure, but it was not accepted. At the end of December 1934, the first elections to the settlement council were held, and on July 1, 1935, the "township" was officially classified as a working settlement and was named Dirigablestroy. Probably for reasons of secrecy on October 19, 1937 the settlement was renamed to Dolgoprudny.

In 1932-1936, the outstanding Italian aeronaut and airship designer Umberto Nobile worked at the Dirigible Building Company and for some time linked his fate with the USSR.

From 1932 to 1937 the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal named after Stalin was carried out through these places. Moscow-Volgostroy and Dmitlag Office of the OGPU (since 1934 - NKVD) were created under it. The construction management was located in Borisoglebsky monastery of Dmitrov city. Canaloarmeys prisoners (convicts) were used as labor force), placed in camps along the entire length of the canal. Not far from the canal route a granite plant was established, whose tasks included the production of facing material for locks, embankments and other structures. And near the Khlebnikovo railway station, the Khlebnikovo ship repair workshops were founded (now the Khlebnikovo Machine Repair Shipyard).

On April 17, 1937 the whole route of the Moscow-Volga canal was filled with water. On July 15, the first permanent navigation along the canal was opened. The canal became the western boundary of Dirigible-Dolgoprudny. The section of the canal passing through Dolgoprudny is called Glubokaya Embankment.

As part of a large-scale hydro project, the Klyazma water reservoir was created to the north of Dirigablestroy, on the bank of which a workers' settlement of vodniki was built (which later became part of Dolgoprudny), which gave its name to the Vodniki stop (in 1951, the platform of the Savelovsky direction of the Moscow Railway "19 km" was renamed into Vodniki).

In 1940, the Central Aerological Observatory began its work in Dolgoprudny.

On November 25, 1946, the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree on the establishment of the Faculty of Physics and Technology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University in Dolgoprudny, which was transformed into the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology on March 17, 1951.

In 1953 Dolgoprudny became the center of the Krasno-Polyansky district, and in 1957 received the status of a city of district subordination. After that, housing and cultural construction was intensified here. In 1963 Dolgoprudny was categorized as a city of regional subordination, the villages of Gnilushi, Kotovo, Shchapovo and Likhachevo were included in the city limits.

In 1959 the settlement of Vodniki, together with Khlebnikovskaya repair and maintenance base, became part of Dolgoprudny.

Since 1963 Khlebnikovskaya repair and maintenance base was renamed into Khlebnikovsky shipyard (since 1975 - Khlebnikovsky machine-building shipyard).

In 1988, the former village of Vinogradovo on Dolgikh Ponds (which originally gave its name to the city) was excluded from Dolgoprudny and included in the "Severny" district of the North-Eastern Administrative District of Moscow.

In 2003, the working settlement of Sheremetyevsky and the village of Paveltsevo were included in the city of Dolgoprudny.

Since 2006 OJSC Khlebnikovsky Machine-Building-Ship Repair Plant in Vodniki has been operating under the new brand "Moscow Yacht Port".

On July 13, 2016, the grand opening of the city park "Novye Vodniki" on the shore of the Klyazma Reservoir took place.

Since 2016, Dolgoprudny's transportation accessibility has significantly improved. Historically, one could leave the city either via the two-lane Likhachevskoye Highway or via the railroad crossings at Novodachnaya and Vodniki platforms. On January 4, 2016, the reconstruction of Likhachevskoye Highway was completed, which increased the number of lanes to three in each direction. At the end of the same year, traffic was opened on the overpass at the Novodachnaya platform, and in 2017 - at the Vodniki platform.